Book Review

Obeyesekere, Gananath. Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human
Sacrifice in the South Seas. (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005). 320 pp, $21.95.

The title alone will draw readers into Obeyesekere's extremely engaging
and satirically tinged post-structuralist deconstruction of ethnographic,
historical, and seafarer narratives that create a portrait of the "Other"as Savage. He builds upon Peter Hulme's distinction between
anthropophagy (the sacrificial ritual eating of humans in highly
prescribed circumstances) and cannibalism (the European mythology
of glassy-eyed primitives who eat enemies and kin without distinction
and fatten up tasty little children for special occasions). Cannibal
Talk is essentially a collection of the author's previously published
essays and lectures on this topic focusing on Fiji and New Zealand and
includes a newly written introduction and conclusion.

The text is remarkably compelling. The first chapters introduce skinny,
thirsty, and—most of all—hungry British sailors who
arrive in Melanesia in the early 1800s in search of proof that cannibals
indeed exist and thrive on the other side of the world. Their stories
become prime fodder for the British press and public. One incident (quoted
in many favorable reviews of this book) involves the shipboard offering
of a piece of roasted human face to a Maori man, who eats it with relish
and even licks his fingers. Aha. Proof! But Obeyesekere invokes a theory
of practical rationality on the part of the natives: British
sailors asked incessant questions about local cannibalistic practices
and were, perhaps, cannibals themselves! Better to align with their
culture than be eaten. And, this is exactly what Obeyesekere proposes—that
the British seamen were "shipwreck cannibals" who in times of dark necessity
ate those human beings (and sometimes dogs and rats) lower in social
rank than themselves. The whole mythology of cannibalism, he says, is
a psychological projection and distancing of their own "atavistic" behavior
onto a remote Other.

Obeyesekere quite explicitly self-identifies as a Sri Lankan native,
one who has endured the (albeit contemporary) mythologizing presence
of the British. Also an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at
Princeton University and powerful spokesman for the decolonization of
research, his interpretations of historical narrative reflect exceptional
depth of grounding in both psychoanalysis and Buddhism. Cannibal
Talk is the capstone to work he began in the late 1980s inquiring
into stories of the 1779 slaying, consumption, and apotheosis
of Captain James Cook in the Hawai'ian Islands. He has argued widely
in print and lecture that the idea that certain European sea captains
were gods was a process of mythologizing analogous to that of
cannibalism—most notably in Current Anthropology ("CA
Forum on Theory in Anthropology: Cook, Lono, Obeyesekere, and Sahlins
[and Comments and Reply]," Vol. 38, No. 2 [Apr., 1997], pp. 255-282)
and Anthropology Today (a six-month series of comments and replies
to an initial article by Marshall Sahlins, "Artificially Maintained
Controversies: Global Warming and Fijian Cannibalism," Vol. 19, No.
3 [Jun., 2003], pp. 3-5).

Obeyesekere does not doubt that anthropophagy and conspicuous
anthropophagy (widespread killing and eating of enemies after the
arrival of European colonizers) existed; he demands, however, that the
European narrative of cannibalism (routine consumption of human
flesh) be seen as just that—a European narrative of events that
are historically absent.

The middle chapters of Cannibal Talk deconstruct a variety of
narratives of post-European contact in the South Seas including global
trade, colonization, and the seemingly insatiable European market for
heads, trinkets, and body parts of the Other. His deft sarcasm and political
critique is astonishingly powerful in a brief section linking head hunting
(caput) with capitalism. The book's final chapter, "On Quartering
and Cannibalism and the Discourses of Cannibalism," proposes that Savagery
is a grand attribution of Otherness operating as a cultural stereotype
not unlike Orientalism (see Edward Said) by encapsulating both
desire for and revulsion towards the Other. "Data" of anthropology and
history must be doubted because they evidence a process of this bi-polar
mythologizing.

Cannibal Talk demands its own deconstruction as Obeyesekere fails
to contextualize the book as the latest in an argument over the past
fifteen years with an equally prominent and well-respected anthropologist,
Marshall Sahlins, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Social Sciences
at the University of Chicago. Sahlins' exceptionally thorough ethnographic
research and appreciation for a wide diversity of voices (including
missionaries, whom Obeyesekere excludes) is prodigious. He believes
that these voices add up to a clear picture of cannibalism spread across
the South Seas. He refuses the distinction of anthropophagy.

In the article cited above, Sahlins writes: "Emancipatory social scientists
and post-modernist types who have been dismantling cultures in the name
of various subaltern subjects, deconstructing historical and ethnographic
descriptions on the grounds that such 'facts' are themselves constructed
in the service of some deeper and darker reality such as power or domination,
have been taken aback recently by the disingenuous adoption by the political
right of the same epistemological tactics…Take pollution and global
warming…Bruno Latour tells of…making the lack of scientific
certainty about global warming the central issue of debate, in order
to divert the public's attention from the overwhelming testimony of
human responsibility for it—thus saving the profits of the industrial
polluters. Creating doubts about apparent 'truths' by arguing that their
status as truths is derived from the regime of power on whose behalf
they have been constructed is a tactic…How are we now going to
prove, and persuade people to believe, that industrial pollution produces
global warming?"

The research community in Pacific studies largely agrees with Sahlins—that
there is indisputable evidence from travelers, missionaries, ethnographers,
and "native" oral history for cannibalism as a "normal," highly embedded
practice in Melanesian and Polynesian pre-European-contact cultures.
In fact, in 2003, the "subaltern" in the form of the chief of people
of Navatusila, Viti Levu, Fiji "talked" a public apology for the killing
and consumption by their forebears of Rev. Thomas Baker in 1867. The
Prime Minister of Fiji acknowledged and used the word "cannibalism"
in the proceedings. The London Times essentially mythologized
the event and native history by reporting cannibals had tried to boil
the minister's boots and found the soles indigestible, hence, they were
now on display in a contemporary museum in Fiji. The contemporary Fijians
took considerable exception to the piece saying they were not that stupid!
But this entire incident of the subaltern speaking back, contradicting
Obeyesekere's entire premise, is not mentioned in his book.

Damon Salesa (Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 1, [2007],
pp. 98-99) applauds Obeyesekere's "dazzling range of comparisons. The
rise of the Maori leader Te Rauparaha is explained as a 'nefarious alliance'
between a group of Maori and European traders like 'the rise of Mafia'
in 'modern third world nations and in the former Soviet Empire' (p.
149)." But why, Salesa asks, has Obeyesekere reverted to "my Sri Lankan
experience and knowledge of European quartering" (p. 189) and ignored
Fijian native discourse on why certain anthropophagic practices are
undertaken? Obeyesekere has constructed a narrative that we want
to hear, that feels right, but that does not take into account
a vast amount of data on cannibalism that has been collected. By speaking
to postmodern academia from the privileged position of Native,
he too is mythologizing Other.

The "controversy" is not simple and not over. For example, Patrick Brantlinger
("Missionaries and Cannibals in Nineteenth-century Fiji," History
and Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 1 [Mar. 2006], pp. 21-38) quotes
missionary texts otherwise sympathetic to natives on "unspeakable horrid
customs." Cannibalism, widow strangulation, and infanticide are mentioned;
but homosexuality is not. "This fact," he says, "should dispel any notion
that they [missionaries] suffered from a collective delusion [about
cannibalism], much less that they conspired to identify all 'heathens'
in all the world's 'dark' abodes as man-eaters."

Even Smithsonian magazine has tacitly inflamed the "controversy"
with "Sleeping with Cannibals: Our Intrepid Reporter Gets Up Close and
Personal with Remote New Guinea Natives Who Say They Still Eat Their
Fellow Tribesmen" (Paul Raffaele, Vol. 37, No. 6 [Sept. 2006], pp. 48-60.)
Katherine Biber's "Cannibalism and Colonialism" (Sydney Law Review,
Vol. 27 [2005], pp. 623-637) attempts a synthesis, crediting the validity
of missionary narratives while at the same time developing an argument
that cannibal discourse accompanied European colonial expansion,
"wherein distant lands were consumed within the body of the Empire and
brought within the jurisdiction of imperial laws" (p. 629). "So long
as it is possible and imaginable that [Australian] Aborigines practice
cannibalism; it remains necessary to control, correct, and eliminate
them…the narratives supplied the justification for force, violence,
and dominance" (p. 635).

An irony of this book is perhaps best stated by Steven Hooper in his
response to Obeyesekere and Arens (Anthropology Today, "Cannibals
Talk," Vol. 19, No. 6, [Dec. 2003], p. 20). "Emerging DNA evidence is
pointing to the worldwide historical practice of anthropophagy." Witness
the highly controversial argument in Man Corn by anthropologist
Christy Turner II for ancient cannibalism in the southwest United States—as
well as follow-up research by Richard Marlar at the University of Colorado,
who has found unmistakable evidence of human myoglobin in both cooking
pots and coprolites (ancient, dessicated human fecal material). "More
interesting anthropologically than the tired question, 'Did it really
happen,' would be, 'Why has this once wide-spread cultural practice
largely ceased?'"

Bethe Hagens
Walden University
School of Public Policy & Administration

Content
in World History Connected is intended for personal, noncommercial
use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate
in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display,
or in any way exploit the World History Connected database
in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright
holder.